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Talk:Brigham Young
Sifting through these nineteenth century Mormons: There's a big difference, methinks, between a man with seven wives and a man with fifty-five. Turtle Fan 18:37, April 9, 2010 (UTC) :The one with fifty-five wives has less disposable income? TR 19:04, April 9, 2010 (UTC) ::Fifty-five wives and fifty-six children, plus himself, obligated him to provide 336 meals every day. That would put a dent in the entertainment budget, yes. ::Well--Polygamy is polygamy, but 55 wives somehow seems a lot more excessive than seven. You can't even keep track of them all. ::Then again many's the ancient monarch who put even Young to shame. The OT gives Solomon on the order of 300 wives and 700 concubines. Turtle Fan 20:41, April 9, 2010 (UTC) :::The only real attractive quality of polygamy is the sexual component. And that is attractive only on paper. Once you start doing calculations as you have done, you realize quickly that the emotional, economical, and physical requirements quickly outweigh any "pleasureable" aspect. ::::Multiple sex partners is only tempting to a point. You can't possibly get through 55 women in a night, or in a week; doing it in a month might just be on the border of possible for the most virile of men, but he'd be on the brink of exhaustion. So either you make them all take an equal number of turns and wait weeks on end to come up in the rotation; or you pick your favorites, neglect the rest, and invite a firestorm of domestic strife. ::::I seem to recall, however, that there are biological advantages. Multiple females for one male is the norm among mammals with large families and complex social behaviors--everyone from horses to lions, from wild dogs to kangaroos. Also, and most relevant to our own species, some of the great apes--I can't remember which. It's also quite common in primitive human societies and only grows rarer as our civilizations become farther removed from nature. The paternal half of the gene pool becomes something of an all-star team: males compete for large harems, the most capable get many opportunities to reproduce and the lesser ones get taken out of circulation. :::::Among great apes, its gorillas where the alpha male has a harem of females. Its also the species with the biggest difference in average size between males and females. This so called sexual dimorphism is a sign of such reproductive behaviour since males bulk up over time to help in fights to maintain their harems. Humans have only a relatively mild level of this so it suggests to biologists that it was not common in the original hunter/gatherer societies. ML4E 16:59, April 10, 2010 (UTC) ::::And there are some benefits for the females as well. They're able to pool their resources in childrearing. Reproductive labor becomes easier and more efficient--not the pregnancy and the labor (though the older wives can give the younger ones advice to make it less of a trial) but everything after the baby is born. A social support network exists within the household for both parents and children. From the reading I've done it appears there are some real benefits to being raised in a polygamous household--if you're in a society where that's the norm. In 21st century USA, for example, what benefits there are get cancelled out by the fact that the only people who would consider living in such conditions to begin with are social deviants, so you're being raised by a bunch of freaks. ::::There's also the social disruption we'd have if a large population of males were prevented from reproducing. China's got a female-to-male ratio of 10:11 thanks to the one-child policy and the availability of abortion on demand, and even with monogamy as the norm it's given rise to major problems, including a violent criminal underworld built around sex-trafficking. Polygamy would cause a far greater imbalance than that. In primitive societies, where polygamy has thrived, everyone's in equal danger of death by disease or starvation or exposure, but violent causes of death hit the men far harder, so the female-to-male ratio allows--necessitates, even--multiple wives for surviving men. Those who get cock-blocked are far too preoccupied with the pushing up of daisies to want to turn over the apple cart. ::::Similarly, among other species which practice this behavior, a male who's been defeated in a battle for leadership of the herd is exiled from the herd's territory and is on his own. If he's part of a species whose members are interdependent for survival, he'll either find another herd with a less formidable male to challenge, or he won't last long. Either way, he won't be making any trouble. Turtle Fan 23:09, April 9, 2010 (UTC) :::I came to the conclusion long ago that polygamy probably could be legalized without much discernable impact to our society, as it would probably price itself out of the market. TR 21:05, April 9, 2010 (UTC) ::::In a society where women spend most of their adult lives as part of the labor pool, maybe not. Say you have five wives, which as we discussed above is surely at or near the absolute upper limit for a one-male household to be manageable. I believe the current American birthrate is 1.8 per woman? So you've got nine kids among them. That's six adults providing for a household of fifteen. Maybe at any given point one woman, the one who most recently gave birth perhaps, is not working but is taking care of the kids who are too young for school full time. Five people providing for fifteen, or one providing for three. In the average American nuclear family, you have one man and one woman and two children who are three years apart. Eight or nine years between the older child's birth and the younger one being enrolled in school. During those eight or nine years it's one person providing for four. Maybe one and a half, if the mother works; but it's a minority of jobs which will let you pay for full-time daycare for two kids and still come out ahead. So unless you've got retired grandparents who live close by and don't mind the imposition (in which case you can get it down to a 1:2 ratio) you'll actually be paying more than in the polygamist family. ::::In Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, most families have multiple husbands and multiple wives, and all the children are pooled--the men don't know or care who fathered whom, and while it's obviously harder for the women to lose track, they treat their own children and their fellow wives' equally. The children are often vague on their own maternity, unless there's something to make it obvious--say one black mother among a number of white ones; that would be hard to miss. I've always thought that was the most economically and socially sensible arrangement of all, but I've never seen it outside of fiction. Turtle Fan 23:09, April 9, 2010 (UTC)